Tuesday, February 22, 2011

In random cryptozoology news, I think it was rather nifty that a couple of kayakers snapped a photo of the Windermere lake monster.It’s probably a good old-fashioned hoax, but nifty nonetheless.

In art and research news, I picked up A Wizard’s Bestiary at a store’s closing sale today, and was rather surprised to find a little of Synnabar’s art inside (I didn’t know she had any art of her Nightmares licensed out.)But I was also rather dismayed to find an unlicensed illustration of T’char.However, that last part aside, it seems to be a rather interesting book, and has a lot of the lesser known critters in it… like a few of my favorites, the Enfield, the Billdad, and South Bay Bessie.It’s definitely a book I want to cross-reference with my others though.

Um, lessee… in werewolf news, I came across a Scottish movie called “Wild Country.”Now… I have a nice little collection of god-awful werewolf films, but this one actually isn’t too bad. It’s certainly a far cry from being the worst. I mean… like most werewolf films, it has some problems, and there’s one in this film that I really dislike… but what separates this film from the rest is that the werewolves look pretty darn good!They were done by Bob Keen (who I believe also did Dog Soldiers) and they’re huge, bestial things.Dire werewolves, if you will.Having been in a quadrapedal costume, I feel sorry for the poor guy who had to be in the suit, but man, does it look good and snarly.In addition, while it doesn’t really crop up in the film, the folks who made the film were taking the nowadays-uncommon approach of werewolves as being people who were wolves for years at a time, like the Anthus werewolves.So, while it may not be the best film ever, if you’re part of the blood-and-gore Fangoria monster crowd… It might be worth your time.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Oi… So glad to have Todd back to a little size again XDMaggie is so small in comparison to the others as is, let alone next to Gevaudan-sized Todd. *Chuckles* And I loved drawing that panel of Faith in the center of the page.

Man guys, I wish I had something interesting to say this week… but not much is going on in this page, science or folklore-wise.Speaking of folklore though, I’m working on finishing up the recording for the next show for The Moonlit Pathway which is interesting, to me anyway.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Oh my goodness guys, I’m so lucky that power stayed on in my area… The snow storms knocked people’s power out for days in some places around here.However, I lucked out, and that means I was able to get the comic done on time, and even manage to clean up some little messes here and there.

So, um… I’m sorry if the various colored word-bubbles are distracting.I do actually have a reason for doing it, and it’s based upon a couple of things… one of which I’m not going to talk about quite yet, but the other is a term I heard in Music Appreciation class back when I was in college: Tone Color.This term refers to the qualities of a sound that distinguishes it from other sounds, even when they’re emitting the same musical pitch… For instance, the difference in sound between someone playing a C note on a flute, and someone singing a C note.While timbre means the same thing, really, Tone Color caught my imagination as an artist, because one of my projects in Color Theory was to interpret a song into shape and color.

Now… regarding astral projection and fetches…Since America is “The Melting Pot” I’ve combined elements of both Native traditions and European ones.For instance, in Native traditions, I don’t recall ever reading about someone who is an actual spirit guide, rather than people having them around as separate entities. However, in Europe, the concept of the Fetch developed.Now, I’ve seen this term be used to mean a few different things, however, in some tales, the Fetch is something of an astral duplicate, or even simply the form the spirit takes when it leaves the body for a while. (For more information on this, please see Claude Lecouteux’s Witches, Werewolves and Fairies). Oftentimes, should these Fetches be corporeal, as opposed to ethereal, then they could be injured, and the same injury would appear on the physical body of the person to whom the fetch belonged.In many of these stories involving the spirit leaving the body and wandering about for a while, the spirit takes the form of an animal, like a mouse, or a butterfly… or, In Dylan’s case, a coyote.This way, I can have a spiritual creature that is still anchored to an actual, physical person, so there’s still that material sort of interaction and familiarity, but it also allows me to include a Native belief and character I’m quite fond of.Dylan isn’t quiiiite the trickster-fool of myth… but then again, his advice did lead Faith to folly earlier, and somehow, that folly not only ended up being okay, but lead her to turn to those who could help her.I’m sort of going about this in a round-about way, I suppose.

Something, randomly, that I find interesting, is just how similar the Fetch is to our modern term of Astral Projection.The more I and others look into myth, the more and more I see the same elements crop up over and over again (A la Campbells’ Hero With a Thousand Faces).For instance, in Brakius’s Historia Norwegiae, Johann Frischius tells the tale of a Laplander who could bring back news from far away, by sending his spirit out and visiting far-off places.This sounds remarkably simplar to our modern Remote Veiwers.And of course, at one time, belief in the Fae Folk was common… they could appear as glowing lights in the night, and sometimes whisked people away.More than one author has noticed the strange similarity to modern time’s aliens. I just find it interesting how it appears that we keep reinventing the same supernatural phenomena to suit the interests and terms of the day.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Oh god guys, you have no idea what a week it has been. *Laughs* I mean, no one died or anything, but a million little annoying things decided to take up a boatload of my time, the latest of which was chipping my car out of a foot of solid ice.… Okay, maybe not a foot.More like four inches.Or… maybe more like a hefty crust.But I couldn’t open my doors, okay?And yet, by some miracle, the comic update is done.I don’t get credit for this one folks.Credit goes to the Comic Gods.You know… the ones that sent the giant ice storm that meant my shift ended up being cut because the trucks couldn’t make it.Um… yay?The ice is pretty though! Maybe I’ll post a few photos.

In regards to the comic… well, folks, sorry about the attack of the talking heads.I tried to cram a liiittle too much into too small a space.Aaaand I kind of cheated, and modded an old picture of my online persona until it looked like Faith for that last word-bubble.Poor Faith… she’s just not any good at this werewolf business.She’s instinctually retarded, her senses aren’t quite right yet, and she looks funny. …Sounds kind of like Highschool, now that I think about it.

Also… yay for werewolf snaggle-derp-fangs.I figure, it’s better to have the pathogen as an injection rather than a saliva-borne virus like rabies.You know, that way so werewolves aren’t dribbling liquid lycanthropy everywhere.In mythology, I’ve yet to come across werewolves with notable snagglefangs while in wolf form, but there are accounts of long, pointy canines while in human form.Oddly enough, it seems a more common trait to indicate a creature is a werewolf (Or witch in animal form) instead of a wolf is the lack of a tail… but darnit, I like tails.For more info on such things, you may want to pick up Sabine Baring-Goulds’s Book of Werewolves.

Speaking of folklore, on a non-werewolf note… remember, tomorrow’s Groundhog Day.Funny thing though… the original version of the holiday used hedgehogs, not groundhogs.However, when the holiday, a mixture of Christanity’s Candlemas and Pagan Imbolc traditions, came to America, there were no hedgehogs to use to divine the weather… so instead, groundhogs are the weather-divining animal in America.

Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough, so, to everyone else who has had to deal with death ice you have my sympathies… and I hope that you guys have a great week!